He wasn’t talking. He was looking out the window of the car all the way. The two adults in the front seat spoke quietly under their breath. He could have listened if he wanted to but he didn’t. For a while, at the section of the road where the river sometimes flooded, he could hear the spray of water under the wheels. They entered the fort and the car slipped silently past the post-office building and the clock tower. At this hour of the night, there was barely any traffic in Colombo. They drove out along Reclamation Road, past St. Anthony’s Church, and he saw the last of the food stalls, each lit with a single bulb. Then they entered a vast open space that was the harbor, with a lone string of lights in the distance along the pier. He got out and stood by the warmth of the car.

ABSTRACT: Kirpal Singh, 21, part of a Sikh regiment of the British Army, joined a sapper unit, headed by Lord Suffolk, which dealt with delayed-action and unexploded bombs, during World War II. The first bomb Singh dismantled was in a giant white chalk horse in Westbury. Miss Morden, Suffolk's secretary, took notes on how he did it. Life expectancy in the sapper units was low. Singh joined because there was greater chance of choice and life in a war alongside an individual. He passed the exam easily; in his country mathematics and mechanics were natural traits. Suffolk, Morden and Harts (the driver-mechanic) were known as “the holy trinity” because of their uncanny survival of bomb explosions. At Suffolk's estate, Singh found a map with the words , “Drawn by desire of…” He adored Suffolk; thought he was the best of the English. After Singh had been with them a year, Suffolk, Morden, and Harts, along with 4 sappers, were killed by a bomb Suffolk was trying to dismantle. Singh had to dismantle another to find out what had gone wrong. Suffolk had said a bomb was more than a mechanical object, you had to consider somebody made it. He ripped out the fuse pocket, and found a second detonator inside the first. He had loves Suffolk, and realized that he was expected to replace him. On a large blueprint sheet he put everything he knew about the new bomb, and at the bottom wrote, “Drawn by desire of Lord Suffolk, be his Student Lt. Karpal Singh.” He rejoined the regular Army, but remembered the day of the giant white horse, when Miss Morden climbed up and doused a handkerchief with eau de cologne for him. She had pulled him out of the vortex of the problem.